


Temporize

by efthemia



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Angst, Domestic, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:23:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7432634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/efthemia/pseuds/efthemia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a ghost in Doumeki Shizuka’s apartment. He doesn’t really mind that much. To be honest, the ghost seems to mind a lot more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has been sitting in my drafts for MONTHS so i'm just kicking my ass and uploading it as a chaptered fic. welcome to hell kids

Doumeki Shizuka moves house for the first time at the turn of the season, autumn to winter, when it’s just cold and rainy enough to be inconvenient. The night before, he dutifully hangs a teru teru bozu in his window and goes to sleep with a distinctly certain feeling in his gut that it won’t work.

And so it doesn’t, of course. It pours rain on the chosen day and he struggles with box after cardboard box that get soaked and soggy with the rain, damp in his hands and leaving pools of water on the floor outside the door of his new apartment as he lugs them up the stairs. It’s three flights, which isn’t really very bad, but it feels like more. Boxes, and some more boxes, and not much else: books, mostly, kitchenware, bed linen and towels, new and old, that his parents had forced upon him as going-away presents. His laptop, an old boxy TV, a lamp, and more books. He doesn’t own many things, and so it’s over quickly. Before he knows it, the friend from university who’d come to help out by lending his truck gives Doumeki a cheery wave and drives off, splashing through puddles and sending sprays of muddy water onto the pavement, leaving Doumeki outside his new apartment, surrounded by soggy cardboard boxes with his new key ring in his hand, and generally at a loss.

He hadn’t _wanted_ to move out of the temple. He liked things the way they were, and was there really any point in change for its own sake? But Toudai was simultaneously the best university for history and folklore as well as being much too far from the temple to commute, and it just wasn’t practical. So he moved. Picked out an apartment within walking distance from the university that had a nice looking convenience store down the corner and said goodbye to his parents and moved. In the end, the move itself only takes a few hours and is almost underwhelming, easier and faster than he expected and over before he really registers it. 

He sighs, and unlocks the door.

Luckily for him, the apartment had come furnished, which was really what had made the move so quick and possible to do in only one trip. It’s bare, cold and unlived-in but looks like it’ll be comfortable enough once he gets settled. It’s remarkably clean, almost unnaturally so, as if some dedicated wife had gone after the wooden floors with a broom multiple times a day. He misses the tatami mats of the temple with a sad hollow pang.

He drags all the cardboard boxes inside from the hall just as the downpour truly becomes exactly that, the wind howling and the rain slamming against the windows with angry, relentless force. Slipping off his shoes, Doumeki goes to the bedroom first with his duffel bag and tosses it onto the Western-style bed, which, if he’s being honest, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to sleep on, and he considers moving the mattress to the floor until he can sell the bedframe secondhand and replace it with a futon.

He goes to the kitchen next: it’s a nice one, which is the main reason he’d chosen the apartment, although the thought of having to cook for himself makes him frown. Once he’s unpacked the boxes of kitchenware, the storage cupboards are full but the pantry and fridge are depressingly bare and he contemplates having to go to the market later today. When he finishes in the kitchen he feels slightly aimless, glancing around his new and very empty apartment helplessly. His eyes fall onto the boxes of books and he sighs, quickly realizing that, in an obvious oversight, he doesn’t own any bookshelves.

Doumeki scratches his head and decides that, for the time being, they can go into the living room. He hasn’t actually been in there yet, and so he picks up a box of books, walks down the hall, and slides the door open with a sock-clad foot.

There are two strange things in the living room, and he notices the less strange of the two first: it’s remarkably warm inside. That, he figures out quickly, is because the kotatsu is on, filling the room with comfortable warmth that seeps into his body, a blissful relief from the dull rain-chill of the other rooms. The second, stranger thing is that the kotatsu is on because someone is sitting at it, with his back to Doumeki: a slender, dark-haired boy, dressed in a gakuran, bizarrely out of place.

Doumeki blinks.

“Oi,” he says, after a moment of standing there in silence, clutching the damp cardboard box in confusion.

The boy turns, and his eyes—blue, or blue-gray, clouded over yet sharp—meet Doumeki’s through his glasses. He raises an eyebrow. “Hello.”

“Hi,” Doumeki says, stupidly.

The boy gives him a cursory once-over and tsks, glancing down at the cup of tea his hands are curled around without actually taking a sip. “Shut the door. You’re letting the cold in.”

“Um,” says Doumeki, equally flatly and stupidly, and then, “I’ll be right back.”

“Take your time,” the boy murmurs as Doumeki backs out of the room and shuts the door behind him.

\---

Doumeki only owns one umbrella, somewhat battered and war-worn, but it does the job as he hurries out into the rain and then back into the other part of the building to find the landlord. He’s old and a little deaf and Doumeki has to repeat what he’s saying several times, at increasing levels of volume, before the old man finally hears what he’s trying to say.

“No need to shout,” he grumbles. “Someone in your apartment? That’s impossible. There’s only two copies of the key, and I have one here.” He shakes his keyring accusingly with a harsh, metallic jangle.

“I’m telling you,” Doumeki persists, “There’s someone there. Are you sure you didn’t give me the wrong key? One to someone else’s place?”

“Someone’s what?”

“Someone’s _place_ ,” Doumeki near-shouts.

“Quiet down. If you’ve got the key to 7C, then no, I didn’t,” the landlord snaps, apparently correct: the dull bronze key in Doumeki’s hand glints with that exact number. “That apartment’s been vacant for months.”

“Listen, just come on and I’ll show you,” Doumeki insists, grabbing the man’s arm and pulling him upright and out the door into a torrent of rain and an even more torrential stream of complaints and grumbles about how he must be mistaken.

Up the stairs, down the hall, through the door, shoes kicked off and towards the living room. Doumeki slides the door open and gestures towards where the boy is still sitting, his back painfully straight and upright, with his feet tucked under him on the cushion he’s sitting on. The boy turns his head and regards them with a blank, politely interested gaze.

“Like I _said_ ,” the landlord snaps, staring right at the stranger, “no one here. Awfully warm in here, though, isn’t it? Your heating bill is going to be something awful if you aren’t careful, Doumeki-san.”

Doumeki looks from the boy to the landlord and to the boy and back again, his mouth opening and then closing a little helplessly.

The landlord’s eyebrows raise, and Doumeki looks at the boy and then back again and coughs. “I—uh, I guess you’re right. They must have left, whoever was here.”

The landlord rolls his eyes and leaves with Doumeki’s umbrella and another reminder about the heating bill.

He turns back towards the boy, who is still holding his untouched cup of tea and looking vaguely amused at the entire display, and asks the only reasonable question he possibly can. “So. Are you a ghost?”

“Are you an idiot?” the boy retorts, his eyebrows scrunching together in affront.

“So you are, then.”

“Yes, _obviously_.” The ghost rolls his eyes and sets the cup down on the table with a loud clack. “Who did you _think_ was keeping this place so clean? And by this place, I mean mine. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve moved in,” Doumeki states bluntly.

The ghost’s lips purse like he’s swallowed a lemon. “No you haven’t. I live here.”

“You don’t, exactly,” Doumeki points out.

“Fine,” he amends, somewhat grudgingly. “But I, ah, _stay_ here. There’s not really room for two, in my opinion. I tried to keep you from moving in in the first place, the usual sorts of methods, but you’re remarkably stubborn and resistant to any persuasion, as humans go. Very annoying. Very tedious. So I just let you see me so we could have this chat.”

Doumeki suddenly remembers difficulties signing the lease: documents missing, wrong phone numbers, prolonged discussions, legal difficulties. The landlord losing the key and having to get it recut. Reports of mold and health hazards. The fucking _rain_ today. He scowls. He _had_ been quite close to giving up, to tell the truth. The only thing that had stopped him was the insufferable inconvenience of commuting and the desire to get an apartment, any apartment, as soon as possible. At least he’d saved some money in the end.

The ghost is still staring at him. Doumeki rubs the heel of his palm against an eye. “I’m not moving out. I like this apartment. It’s close to my university. It has a good kitchen.”

The ghost sighs, long and loud and dramatic. “Of _course_ it has a good kitchen, _I_ lived here, but that’s beside the point. I’m going to have to ask you to reconsider.”

“Move over,” Doumeki says, seating himself at the kotatsu unceremoniously and placing the box of books—he’d been holding it this entire time—on top. “It’s cold in the other room.”

The ghost squawks in an undignified way. “You _can’t just_ —“

“I’ve paid the deposit and a month’s rent,” Doumeki explains, peeling the waterlogged tape from the flaps of the cardboard and opening the box to reveal his collection of books which is, luckily, only mildly damp. “I’m a student, I’m not made of money, and I can’t break the tenancy that easily. You’re gonna have to deal with me for a while. What’s your name?”

The ghost splutters angrily. “You— now, listen—“

Doumeki meets his eyes with a calm, measured look, amber into blue-gray, and the ghost tenses up and then sighs, a little of the pent-up energy seeping out of his thin frame. “Watanuki. Watanuki Kimihiro. You’re remarkably calm about all this.”

“I grew up in a temple,” Doumeki responds. Watanuki places a long-fingered hand against his forehead and groans. Doumeki, in answer, gets up to make himself a cup of tea.

\---

As used to these things as Doumeki is, when he wakes up in the morning, he rather thinks he dreamed it. The reason for this is simple: the ghost—Watanuki—is nowhere to be found. And it’s not as if Doumeki doesn’t look. He searches the whole apartment for a confirmation that his imagination wasn’t acting up: living room, kitchen, hallway, shoe closet, bedroom, even flicking back the curtain in the shower and peering into his wardrobe just to check for a slender figure, unassuming in his glasses and neat school uniform. But there’s nothing.

There are several explanations, and he ponders them with a vague, distracted sort of interest as he eats a thoroughly depressing breakfast of rice with furikake and instant miso soup, which is essentially the only food he has in the house. One: He imagined it all (worrisome). Two: He needs to go to the market as soon as possible. Wait, no. Two: Watanuki gave up and left (possible, but unlikely, considering his insistence the day prior). Three: Watanuki’s just one of those ghosts that’s sometimes there, sometimes not (also possible, but he’ll just have to wait and see).

He shrugs, and deals with the more important issue. Food. He goes to the market down the street, halfheartedly bargains for better deals, and buys a huge volume of groceries with a kind of resigned determination that apparently seems to affect the old women running their fruit and vegetable stands with some sort of pity or sympathy. College student, just moved here, immersed in his studies, doesn’t know the area or how to cook for himself, and with no girlfriend to help him—! Only one of these assumptions is untrue; Doumeki knows perfectly well how to cook for himself, but just really doesn’t want to. He leaves with a strange mismatch of items that he didn’t need at prices better than he expected.

\---

A few weeks of this, and option one is looking the most likely. He doesn’t have much time to dwell on this, though, because he finds himself suddenly occupied. Classes have started, and soon his pathetic attempts at cooking for himself dwindle and then fade into nothingness, as he stays at the library from opening to closing, stumbling back into his apartment with a premade bento from the nearby convenience store which he heats in the microwave before his regular half-asleep shower and then passes out on his bed, face-down and breathing in the unfamiliar smell of the sheets. It’s a little ridiculous for someone his age to be homesick: and yet. The temple was familiar to him, like breathing; he never gave it a second thought while he was there, never considered leaving not because it had never occurred to him but because it seemed, rather than an inevitability, a far-distant future, so far that it was barely worth considering until it crept up on him with a sudden, insistent immediacy.

Two weeks pass by, then three, and no sign of Watanuki. Doumeki is forced to concede that either he imagined him, or that his sheer pigheaded stubbornness managed to force him away after only a day. It wouldn’t be the first time. And yet he’d expected a little more resistance from the ghost than that.

There are different types of spirits—many, in fact. But, Doumeki finds himself thinking as he chews on a store-bought onigiri, thinking in a formal, academic sort of way as if he’s writing a paper or giving a lecture, when it comes down to it, you can class all spirits into two types. Troubled, and untroubled. The latter ones aren’t usually too difficult to deal with, and they won’t stick around if you shoo them away. They don’t have anything to do, in particular, not in the sense of an end goal. The first type, though—they stick around with a vengeance. One place, always, and they kick up a fuss. And although it wasn’t as if Doumeki was infallible, he was normally pretty good at guessing this type of thing.

As he flops onto his futon (he’d replaced the bed, finally) Doumeki stares up at the ceiling as he clicks the light off and contemplates the same three things as always, obsessive and unvarying.

One: (spirits who had died, and those who hadn’t, and those who existed in varying degrees) university was harder than he thought it would be.

Two: (the quiet stillness, not empty but calm, belying the business and the constant motion of the place) he missed home.

Three: (long pale neck, short black hair, oval glasses reflecting the light, blue-gray eyes) he was surprisingly lonely—had to be, if he was obsessing over a _ghost_ this much.

\---

It’s on the morning of the fourth week of living in his new residence, a chilly, icy Sunday of the kind that leaches all the warmth out of the apartment no matter how much he turns up the sadly ineffective thermostat, when it all changes. Doumeki wakes up to the sound of loud metallic clangs and sounds reminiscent of banging pots and stirring with wooden spoons. He looks at the dim screen of his phone with a half-open eye: 7:45 AM. Far earlier than he’d ever wake up on a weekend. He stumbles into the kitchen to find the source of the noise, half-asleep and far too drowsy to actually consider why it’s being made in the first place, with only the single-minded thought of making it stop.

When he does find the source, he stumbles to a halt. A slim figure with black hair and glasses, in a comical apron over his school uniform with a matching scarf tied around his hair, is in the kitchen, and cooking with a _vengeance_. About every single item of food Doumeki owns (which doesn’t amount to a lot) is spread across the counters, along with most of his kitchenware. Three of the four burners are on. The rice cooker dings, and Doumeki opens his mouth and then closes it, unsure of what to say, and settles for “Oi.”

Watanuki turns towards him, harried and distracted. “Ah, there you are. Do you have chili oil? I want to put it in the tamagoyaki, but I can’t find it. This kitchen is an absolute disgrace, by the way. When’s the last time you cleaned out the stove—? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear it. Chili oil. Where is it?”

“Don’t have any,” Doumeki responds after a short pause of fumbling for the right words. He’s still barely awake, and his mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton.

Watanuki tsks in annoyance and tosses a pad of paper towards him. There’s a shopping list on it. “Go to the store. I can’t do anything with what you’ve got here. And for heaven’s sake, shave before you do. Being a student is no excuse for looking homeless.”

Doumeki takes a few moments to take in the situation, decides not to question or kick up a fuss when he smells the food cooking, and pockets the list. “If I get mackerel, will you make that too?”

“ _No_ ,” Watanuki shouts over his shoulder as Doumeki leaves the room, and then, even louder and more pointedly, “You’re _welcome!_ ”

“Tch,” Doumeki says to himself, and slips on his shoes and jacket over the sweatpants and t-shirt he’s wearing. He doesn’t bother to shave. He’s far too hungry, and besides, he feels vibrantly alive and energetic for the first time in weeks as he shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and heads out into the cold November air to buy the mackerel, regardless of what the ghost says. It’s _his_ kitchen, after all.

\---

This exchange had led Doumeki to believe that there would be no more arguments about the apartment, and who owned it (him) and who had a right to stay there (also him), but this quickly turns out to not be the case. Just because he’s making the best of a difficult situation, Watanuki explains snappily as he shoves a bowl of miso soup towards Doumeki’s “ungrateful” face (his words), doesn’t mean he’s _accepted_ it. He just couldn’t bear to see his own home neglected like this, god knows the last time the floors were swept, and the kitchen—! _Disgraceful._

Watanuki, Doumeki quickly discovers, talks in italics, all barbs and constant, fiery irritation. To put it in a less tactful way: he complains _constantly._

Doumeki does, in fact, put it in this less tactful way, audibly and to Watanuki’s face, because that’s what he’s best at. “Why do you complain so much? It’s not like it helps anything.”

Watanuki’s response is to sputter angrily and go off into a rant about ungrateful pushy people who don’t appreciate any of the finer things in life, like good cooking, or good manners.

“I appreciate your cooking,” Doumeki points out, slurping soup.

“You _should,_ ” Watanuki retorts, pushing him towards the sink to make him do the dishes in payment and muttering about the evils of convenience store lunches.

And yes: pushes. To Doumeki’s interest, he eventually discovers that although Watanuki isn’t around all the time by any means—he’ll disappear for hours or days at a time, leaving neatly labeled tupperware of food in the fridge and passive-aggressive sticky notes on the broom and mop—he’s still somewhat substantial, when he is around. At least, most of the time, and to varying degrees. He can cook, obviously, and handle all the appliances and cleaning supplies. It’s not only that he can, but he makes the best food Doumeki’s ever eaten, and he’s a goddamn _ghost._ At this realization, Doumeki had already secretly resolved never to move out of the apartment while their strange arrangement continued. But, yes: he can cook, although he doesn’t eat himself, and he can push Doumeki around a little, although that seems to take a little more effort, and sometimes his arms turn wispy or go through things.

( _Stop staring!_ had been the reply when Doumeki first witnessed this phenomenon.)

He doesn’t stop, because it’s interesting; spirits are interesting; Watanuki’s interesting. And before he knows it, a month has passed, and their strange routine has become as familiar as anything he knows.


	2. Chapter 2

A little more than a month later, several bad things happen at once. 

The first is that it snows for the first time that year, in early December. The roads freeze over, and the windows, and Doumeki wraps himself in blankets and stays in the living room at the kotatsu with his books for days on end, heating bill be damned. Watanuki joins him with endless cups of hot tea that he holds but never drinks, leeching the sensation of warmth out of them in an old human habit and pushing them off onto Doumeki when they go cold, who goes to microwave them back to a reasonable temperature with a grumble. When he sleeps, he dreams of soft white drifts and icicles, penguins and polar bears, convinced at some level that he’ll never remember the feeling of warmth. He catches cold, and Watanuki foists congee and extra blankets and horrible herbal remedies on him and snaps about the horrors of overwork and idiots like him not dressing for the weather.

The second thing that happens is that, in the most typically inopportune timing, Doumeki has exams coming up: his first really serious ones, far worse than the set he’d had at the end of his first semester. The perpetual cold he has makes it worse. He doggedly, stubbornly studies despite it all, to the point where Watanuki and his small circle of friends from university and even his parents threaten to intervene. Long hours poring over old books until his eyes ache and his whole body shivers, extra classes, writing practice exams until his hands cramp. Watanuki threatens to kill him just to make him take a break. To be entirely honest, Doumeki doesn’t know if that’s possible, but he certainly doesn’t doubt that Watanuki would, at the very least, _try._

The third thing is that he and Watanuki argue, really argue, for the first time. And this, by far, is the worst of the three.

It’s not the first time they’ve fought, by any means. Far from it—by this point, arguments with Watanuki have become a daily, routine, almost comforting experience. Doumeki knows he tends to annoy people—too stubborn, too straightforward, too blunt, too—everything, really. But he’s never before met someone who seems to be so overwhelmingly, almost wilfully annoyed with his entire existence. They fight over everything: chores, shopping, the way Doumeki looks, the things he says, how much he eats, his habits, his non-habits. Watanuki bristles defensively like a porcupine and lashes out, even more so when Doumeki—like he usually does—remains stone-faced and impassive despite the other’s needling. Watanuki can be petty, touchy, relentlessly and infuriatingly precise. But despite that, never truly unkind. Never cruel.

And so, when Doumeki sees Watanuki _actually_ angry, it feels as if his small world has been thrown off its axis. Perhaps because it starts innocently enough. Doumeki is at the kotatsu, doing homework, with the screen connecting the living room to the kitchenette left open as Watanuki cooks dinner in the other room. Beef stew, by the smell of it. Doumeki’s stomach growls, and Watanuki makes a face.

He finds himself watching, absentmindedly noticing details as Watanuki bustles around. The delicate line of the nape of his neck, and the few wispy hairs falling out of the back of the ridiculous kerchief he always ties around his hair. The way his fingers and hands look, long and thin and elegant, as he stirs a pot and opens a cupboard. The way he holds himself, upright and poised. Watanuki must feel eyes on him, because he turns and glances over his shoulder towards Doumeki and wrinkles his nose in annoyance, and Doumeki notices, all of a sudden, how very—

“Oi,” he says bluntly before he thinks any more of it. “You’re pretty young, aren’t you?”

Watanuki doesn’t freeze, not exactly. He keeps stirring the soup, but his shoulders and arms lock up with a certain sort of tension that makes his movements seem awkward and robotic, with none of the smoothness and ease of a moment before. “I suppose.”

“So then how’d it happen?”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Watanuki snaps.

“How’d you die? You don’t have any wounds or anything so it’s hard to tell. Drowning? Murder? Car crash?”

He looks over and, to his surprise, sees that Watanuki is pale and trembling angrily, reminding him of nothing more than a slender tree in heavy wind. “What?”

“What do you mean, _what_ ,” Watanuki spits, whirling around, the stew forgotten. “Don’t you think that might be a bit of a delicate subject? That perhaps you shouldn’t pry into, as it’s _none of your business?_ Did you ever consider that, idiot?”

“I was just wondering,” Doumeki says bluntly. “No need to be so sensitive.”

“ _I’m_ sensitive?” Watanuki near-shrieks. “You are the most insensitive person I’ve ever met! You honestly astound me! You don’t have any decency, any social graces at all, any idea of how to interact with others—”

“Oi. No need to shout. No one but me can hear you,” Doumeki says.

Watanuki continues on his tirade, which Doumeki largely ignores. His curiosity still isn’t satisfied, and he can’t help himself. His mouth speaks before he can think twice about it. “So— illness? Cancer, maybe? Suicide? Plane crash? Did your house burn down?”

At some point, Watanuki seemingly snaps. His hands must go insubstantial, because the dish he’s holding drops to the ground and shatters. Doumeki jumps at the sound, and realizes that he may, as usual, have pushed Watanuki a bit too far.

But this is different. Watanuki storms into the living room, face pale and set, eyes horribly cold and angry, _really_ angry, not just irritated like he is normally. 

“Next time someone tells you to drop a subject, Doumeki-kun,” he says, spitting the words out like acid, “you drop it because it’s none of your _fucking business._ ” 

Doumeki doesn’t say anything.

“I’m leaving for awhile. Finish the stew yourself for once if you want to eat,” Watanuki says, and promptly disappears, leaving Doumeki alone with a half-finished pot of beef stew, a very empty stomach, a shattered dinner plate, and a rare, vague sense of actual guilt.

\---

Watanuki is back by the next morning, and makes breakfast without saying anything. Doumeki doesn’t apologize, but also doesn’t say anything on the topic of Watanuki’s mysterious death again. He is a spirit, after all. Sometimes these things are better left alone, regardless of curiosity.

\---

Despite that, and against his apparent streak of recent bad luck, he passes his exams (does well, even). Watanuki cooks his favourite dishes with only minimal complaining, and barely even calls him an alcoholic when he goes out drinking with friends to celebrate. Then it’s winter vacation, and it seems like he can finally relax, until:

“You want me to exorcise you?” 

“Well, yes. At least, I’d like you to try, if you don’t mind.” Watanuki looks less than pleased to be asking. “I can’t just stick around and keep cooking for you forever, can I? I’ll go insane in another few months from having to look at your face every day. I’ll have an aneurysm and die a second time.”

“Pretty sudden change of heart,” Doumeki mutters, then shrugs when Watanuki glares at him. “Well. I can try. I’ve never done an exorcism. My grandfather used to do them, though.”

“If he could do it, you probably can too,” Watanuki says, raising an eyebrow. “Those things tend to run in the family, I think.”

\---

They give it a try the next week. Doumeki had returned home to the temple for a short visit and to collect the necessary materials on the weekend, leaving with several tupperware full of his mother’s cooking and a promise to pay them a proper visit on New Year’s next week. He hopes they don’t notice that the things he took are missing before he can return them. His mother probably wouldn’t be happy to hear he was trying to exorcise a spirit from his apartment. 

“What do you do with it?” Watanuki asks, eyeing the strip of paper in Doumeki’s hand suspiciously. “Do you burn it? Do I have to swallow it?”

“No, dumbass,” Doumeki says, “Like this.” He closes the gap between them with a step and slaps the paper onto Watanuki’s forehead, hard. 

“What was _that_ for?” Watanuki screeches in protest.

“Ofuda. Stick it on the forehead. To get rid of vengeful spirits.”

“I’m not _vengeful_! And you could have warned me!”

“You seem pretty vengeful to me. You clean violently.” Doumeki shrugs. “Anyway, it didn’t work. Moving on.”

He tries everything he can think of. He walks around his entire apartment shaking a haraigashi over every possible surface, with particular focus on the kitchen, where Watanuki spends most of his time. Watanuki trails around after him to watch, but is still there when he’s covered every inch of the apartment, even the front door. 

He lights incense, chants in a bored monotone, and shakes a shakujo directly in front of Watanuki’s face, rattling it as loudly as possible, just in case. There’s no noticeable effect other than Watanuki complaining that his ears are ringing, which, quite frankly, he doesn’t think is possible for a ghost. Typical of him to be so overdramatic. 

He sprinkles some salt around the apartment and chucks some in Watanuki’s face for good measure. Just to cover all his bases.

“Anything else?” Watanuki asks grimly.

“Well, we could try this,” Doumeki says dubiously, heading towards the bathroom with Watanuki following. He turns on the shower and lets the water run for a minute or two.

“Are you steaming up the mirrors?”

“Nah. It’s like a waterfall, sort of.” He shoves Watanuki under the shower head. Watanuki emerges a second later, sputtering, but unfortunately still very substantial and very angry. “For purification. Didn’t seem to work, though. I guess we could try it at an actual waterfall.”

“I’d rather not,” Watanuki grumbles, making a show of drying himself off even though the water didn’t even stick to him. “And I’m starting to doubt whether these are real rituals! Are you sure they all need to be so excessive?”

“It’s an exorcism,” Doumeki points out. “It’s not exactly supposed to be fun for you.”

They return to the living room, and Watanuki sighs. “Is that it, then?”

“One more,” Doumeki says, and picks up his practice bow and arrows from the archery club from where they’re sitting in the corner of the room. 

“Wait, hold on—” Watanuki eyes the bow apprehensively. “Is that really necessary?”

“Probably our best shot, actually,” Doumeki says, hefting the bow in his hand. “Bows have a lot of spiritual energy. This is how Haruka-san used to do it, so I left it for last.”

“Haruka-san?”

“My grandfather. Hold still.” Doumeki aims.

“Do you really need to use an arrow—?”

“Stop fucking whining, it’s not like I can hurt you,” Doumeki grumbles, and shoots. 

Everything else he’d tried had felt ridiculous. This doesn’t. 

He’d been holding a bow and arrow since he was five; competing since he was ten. Just because of that, the act of shooting a bow is so natural to him now that he barely has to think about it, like walking or brushing his teeth. But beyond that, there’s— something else. Like untying a knot. A sudden sense of relief, or of clarity, like he imagines it would feel to put glasses on and see the world come into focus. The arrow flies from his hand, and he realizes exactly two things at once.

First: this is what he is meant to do, as if he’s been created for it.

And, second: he does not want it to work.

Doumeki opens his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them.

It hadn’t worked— Watanuki is still there, cringing away with his hand over his face defensively in an instinctive human reaction that Doumeki can’t help but laugh a little at. The arrow is stuck in the wall behind him, apparently having gone straight through him with no effect. Doumeki walks over and yanks it out, examining the small hole in the wall with a grimace. “Probably should’ve done it without the arrow.”

“You mean you didn’t have to use one? You bastard, Doumeki—”

“Felt more natural with one. Anyway,” he says, ignoring Watanuki yelling at him as usual, “can you make yakitori for dinner tonight? I’ll go get beer to drink with it.”

Watanuki yells at him a bit more, jabbing his finger accusingly, calls him a glutton and an alcoholic, and tells him he’s going to get fat from drinking so much, but, eventually, goes into the kitchen and ties on his apron to start preparing the yakitori. Doumeki gets a broom— he’ll sweep up the salt from everywhere on the floor, and mop up the water in the bathroom. Then he’ll go get beer, regardless of whatever that ghost says. They’ll eat dinner (or he will, while Watanuki sits there), and then he’ll study a bit for a quiz he has tomorrow and take a shower before he sleeps. And when he wakes up, in the morning, Watanuki will still be there. 

There’s a strange sort of comfort in that, he thinks, as he begins to sweep. 

\---

He thinks, or rather hopes, that after a failed attempt or five Watanuki will have given up on the whole exorcism plan. It seems that way for a few days, but Watanuki eventually brings it up again the next week when Doumeki is getting ready to go to a lecture.

“Whazzat?” He mumbles, brushing his teeth, and spits as Watanuki looks on with a vague sense of disgust. “I mean, I’m not sure what else I can try.” That much is truthful. He had tried pretty much everything he could think of, and none of it had worked.

He has a sneaking suspicion why, too. Watanuki may be annoying and particularly loud, for a ghost, but when it comes down to it he’s just a standard yurei. Not even a particularly dangerous or evil or vengeful one, that he could destroy or drive away. With spirits like that, the only really surefire way to get rid of them is to help them get what they want so they can move on.

The thing is, he knows this. He’s pretty sure Watanuki knows it too, unless he’s an absolute fucking idiot. Whether Watanuki knows what he wants or not, Doumeki isn’t sure, but in any case it seems pretty clear that he won’t be telling Doumeki anytime soon. 

“You’re probably right. I think we’ve reached the limits of your ability for now.” For some reason, Watanuki looks apprehensive as he follows Doumeki into the living room and watches him put his books and laptop into his backpack. “The thing is, I know of someone else who might be able to help out.”

“Hn,” Doumeki intones, searching for his pencil case. “Why didn’t you say before?”

Watanuki grimaces. “From what I hear, she’s just a little—well, troublesome.”

“Who is she?”

“A witch.”

Interesting. Doumeki finds his pencil case and puts it in his bag, zipping it up. “So what do I do, then?”

“You can go see her. She has a shop nearby that she stays in. You can tell her what you want, and she’ll give it to you. And she’ll take payment. It shouldn’t be too much for just a standard exorcism charm.” He looks dubious for a second. “I think.”

“What if she rips me off?”

“She won’t rip you off. Here, I’ll give you the address.” Watanuki attempts to pick up a pencil from the coffee table, but it immediately slips through his fingers. “Ah. Damn it. I’ll dictate it to you.”

“Hm?”

“Too insubstantial,” Watanuki mutters, wiggling his half-transparent fingers.

Doumeki raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t say anything. Watanuki seems to look relieved as Doumeki copies down the address on a scrap of paper without comment.

“Oh, and,” Watanuki says hurriedly, catching Doumeki’s arm as Doumeki kneels down to tie the laces on his shoes, “if she asks who sent you, ah—don’t tell her my name.”

“Why would it matter?” Doumeki asks.

Watanuki shrugs, looks away, mutters something noncommittal. 

Whatever. It doesn’t matter if he tells him or not. He can’t tell if this errand will be good or bad, in the long run, but he has a feeling about it. If anything, it seems like it might be informative. “I’ll go after class today,” he promises, and heads out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "so watanuki, if you're a ghost, how did you die?" "oh my god doumeki you can't just ask people why they died"
> 
> in case you're wondering, no, doumeki didn't manage to correctly guess how watanuki died! it's still a mystery. watanuki's just very sensitive about it.
> 
> anyway, i've finally gotten off my ass and written another chapter of this after more than a year... i'm sorry about the wait!! i've actually had this whole story planned out forever, and i know exactly what happens and how it ends, but actually Writing it has been more difficult. but i've graduated college now and hopefully will have more time over the next month or so to work on it. the good news is that this was the chapter i was really procrastinating on writing (mostly because not a lot happens, and it's kinda boring) so hopefully it'll be a bit faster paced after this. the plot really starts to pick up the next chapter, as you can hopefully tell (and i'll be making good on that third character tag!!)
> 
> based on the way i've planned it there will probably be six chapters in total, but the later ones might be longer so i'm not completely sure.
> 
> also, as a final note, i think i may have forgotten how japanese school semesters work in the first chapter, but it's been so long that i can't actually remember. i THINK the intended timeline for this fic is basically that it starts with doumeki moving at the beginning of the second semester of his first year, in the winter. (he commuted for his first semester, and then decided to move because it got too troublesome). there may be some details inconsistent with that but hopefully it makes sense overall!


End file.
